A wooden seat that needs to wood, glue or screws, but focusing on traditional construction techniques, this design is about the craft-oriented journeyman and not a comfort-driven destination.

Jorge Penadés of Spain emphasizes the act of construction and deconstruction with his Nomadic Chair, which slots together and back apart in two minutes. It utilizes bright metal connectors and tucks away into a simple leather sling for travel.

In both seating and backpack form it is built to stand out from the crowd. Critics will no doubt point out that it is not the most comfortable item to carry or even to sit in, but its assembly involves joinery methods that stress the process over the product. Someone looking for a camping chair is probably still best off buying one made of lightweight aluminum and seat-friendly fabric.

The work is an extension of his Nomadic Studio, a student thesis project proposing larger-scale dwellings employing similar techniques to enable portable and modular home construction.

An elegant concept and beautifully executed, this thesis project strips away everything but the essentials from the process of printing, proposing a simple solution to reduce visual clutter in your office.

Dubbed Stack, an aptly short title for such a minimal machine, the design represents a thesis solution by Mugi Yamamoto. Aside from its small size and refreshingly spare appearance, its approach also circumvents a classic shortfall of typical printers: the size of the paper tray.

Instead of reloading frequently, you simply set Stack on top of a pile of blank sheets of paper and let it work its own way down, itself a lovely process that also lets you know how far you are through the printing job at hand.

A few points of concern, though, from a practical standpoint: it is hard to say how well the printer would remain stable as it progresses, or whether shifts in weight along the way would cause jams. It is also not entirely clear whether power cords would pose an problem, or how high the finished paper stack could go before potentially spilling off the sides. Still, as a concept, it is lovely, and at least some of these issues could be corrected by introducing elements like guides that flip down to keep the stack aligned below, or higher supports above to stabilize finished sheets.

You could make a strong case for this vehicle being barely recognizable as such. The dimensions, fenestration and over spatial configuration give good clues that this space may have once been a school bus, but the finishes, furnishings and built-ins go above and beyond bare-bones adaptive reuse.

Architecture student Hank Butitta was sick of drafting imaginary buildings in studio courses destined never to be built, and sought (with help from his younger brother Vince) to steer his education in a more hands-on direction.

For his final thesis project at the University of Minnesota, Hank bought a bus for $3,000, added $6,000 to improve it, and spent fifteen weeks creating this amazing multifunctional mobile home.

We should start with the evolution of the programmatic diagram, described and illustrated in simple terms: “The even spacing of the window bays allow for the volume to be broken down into modular units of 28 inches square, leaving an aisle that is also 28 inches wide. The modular units are then grouped to create four primary zones: Bathroom, Kitchen, Seating, and Sleeping.”

From there, a series of rules and strategies evolved, like: keep the space as open as possible, so the 225 square feet available area does not get broken down into cramped compartments.  The result is a limitation of objects built above the bottom edge of each window and an open-feeling floor plan. Hank also “developed a thin wall system integrating structure, insulation, electrical, lighting, and facing, leaving the interior open for occupation. The ceiling is covered in plywood flexed by compression, and the floor is reclaimed gym flooring, complete with 3-point line.”

Throughout the project, there are clever and deceptively simple ways to redeploy structure to address different needs on demand, like a bed system that allows for different sleeping configurations, and seats that with secret flip-up and slide-out panels to allow for further lounging or additional overnight guests. Storage is tucked and hidden throughout, integrated into other built-ins wherever spare space was available. The detailing throughout is minimal and consistent, but don’t let that fool you: a great deal of thought and work went into that apparent simplicity.